Escape

August '13

Feature Article from Hemmings Motor News

Rocks sprayed out from underneath the Nash's tires, sailing through the crisp, thin sky as if reaching for escape from the inevitable bonds of gravity. They landed at the base of the slope and cracked against a growing pile. Clouds of dust hung low and stirred with each round of rocksplitting brought on by each urge of the car forward.
Edward peered over the steering wheel, tried to see through the hood and fenders to the wisp of a donkey trail up the slope. His right leg muscles quivered from holding the brake pedal flat against the floor. He turned to Richie and nodded. The boy opened the door, judged the terrain beneath the running board, and jumped, skinning both knees and the heels of his hands on the landing.
Above Richie, the trail angled steeper upward, almost straight up the side of the hill, the jumble of rocks offering no traction the entire way up. Over the other side, a clear line of sight to Barstow. They might make it there on the gas they had in the tank.
From the ridge he might even spot the cops that chased them up here and waited at the bottom for them to come whimpering down.
Richie dusted himself off, stacked a few flat-faced stones along the trail to give the Nash's tires some purchase, and motioned to Edward to try again. Edward crept up the hill as slow as he could in first gear, following Richie's hand signals. Richie backed, backed, until he stood on the ridge, leading the Nash like a toy on a rope.
A stone to the right, and Edward would have made it. Instead, the tires scrabbled off the trail and scrubbed his momentum. He jabbed the clutch rather than the brake and the Nash rolled backward. It forklift steered sideways, then barrel rolled back down the trail, at one point leaving the ground entirely to soar, turning, chrome flashing against clear blue sky as if to pierce it, as if to escape it.
The Nash landed all four tires down. Richie crossed the ridge and ran.

This article originally appeared in the August, 2013 issue of Hemmings Motor News.